WICKED Hair and Makeup: Makeup

Hi, I'm Lindsay Northern from

"Behind the Emerald Curtain." Today you're

invited to come backstage and learn a

little bit about the makeup design of

Wicked. See what it takes to bring an

entire cast of imaginary characters

to life.

Makeup is the area that really is the most

personal to an actor. Makeup, then hair,

then their body. So, what they see all the

time is their own face in the mirror. So,

the relationship to the actor, and Joe

Delude, the makeup designer, is truly one

of trust. I think when you initially start

working with an actor, I go about by

asking them what do you see for this

character? And then I can work with what

they think but also what I know I need to

do for the makeup as well.

Sometimes, they are just made more

beautiful than they are, sometimes they

are made into somebody who is not the

person you think you want to see when you

look in the mirror. I think that when you

look at the makeup of "Wicked," there

are moments of extreme, but mostly

you're looking at natural, beautiful young

people to some of the more extreme

makeup of the animals. The animals were

a little tough in the beginning, because

we really weren't sure what direction we

wanted to go in. We didn't want to make

it a literal animal, but it would be

different from what everybody else

looks like.

There is makeup that defines character all

through the show. The mob, which is the

ensemble in the opening, actually comes

back again in act two in a much more

menacing capacity. You know, we kind of

make them look kind of scary like they've

been up all night so they get dark

circles, or like bruised cheeks, and then

the girls take off their lipstick so they

look pale. The pitchfork-wielding mob and

witch hunters are all the same people that

are creating emerald city— they transform

themselves with costumes, with wigs, with

hats. They change their makeup, they are

transformed into these high-class couture

denizens of the Emerald City.

Becoming Elphaba is about transforming.

The present makeup for Elpaba is

a product from MAC called Chromocake.

It's almost like a watercolor, so you just

add a bit of water to it and we use these

wide, japanese brushes and we paint it on

And then sculpting the face, finding out

how to develop a color palate that defines

the eyes, the cheekbones, the mouth, we

use, you know, some normal colors like a

beige and brown, or black, but we also use

purple for the contour because the purple

and the green contrast really nicely.

The whole point was to make it look like

skin, not look like makeup. To watch Joe

Delude do it for the first time is pretty

exciting. Through the course of the show

there is constant touchups of the makeup,

but also because she is changing as a

character, she accelerates into

being the wicked witch of the west in

Act 2. We sort of do what we call our glam

Elphaba makeup— it gets darker it gets

more dramatic, we wing out the eyes so

that, you know, it comes out to here, and

you know elongate her eyebrows and contour

her a little bit more- she gets a darker

lipstick. Makeup-wise you can see a change

in her character from simple. basic, not

wearing any makeup, per-say and then going

into something that is much more dramatic

like she's come into her own now. A lot

of times when I get makeup students who

will email me and ask me questions, it

makes me realize how amazing the show was

and how

groundbreaking it was in so many ways.

It was a wonderful experience just to

be able to create a whole world.